Thanksgiving Week

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.

We are having an entertaining stay in Austin for the holiday week.

Dylan did great on the drive out, even napping when we asked him to on the second day.

Our first day out here Linda and I headed to Riemer's Ranch to do some climbing with Matt and Katie (who is almost 6 months pregnant) and Thu and Natalie. I was experiencing an "I hate Riemer's" day, climbing like crap and in general not enjoying the activity though I did have a good time hanging out with friends. Katie nearly sent her second 5.11 ever, before she got pregnant she had only climbed 5.10, so the bigger she gets the harder she climbs, go figure, Linda could not climb after about 4 months. Linda worked out the moves on Learning to Crawl, which is a pretty stiff 5.12c with lots of powerful moves and no real rests. Matt finally laid to rest Super Cruiser 5.13b which he probably got on the first day he climbed at Riemer's maybe 3 years ago and claimed it was easy and would go down any try, well 3 years later and countless tries it finally did.

On Tuesday I did a 200km permanent, which was basically a combination of 2 local rides. One, the dam loop is largely in town with a handful of big (for Texas) climbs and the other, the Fitzhugh full on Flog is an out and back to Johnson City (home of Lyndon B.), called a flog because of the endless rolling hills.

On Wednesday, Thu got off work early and we headed out to the crag which is on land that he and Nat own, Flat Creek. Dylan and Noah had a great time playing naked in the creek and sharing food. The adults had a good time pulling on some steep rock and Linda worked out the moves on Scapegoat 5.12b and basically did it with 1 hang on her second try to lead the route. Thu came quite close to finishing off the 5.13b he has been working for the last few months and Nat got some good beta for the crux section of the route she has been working on. I on-sighted Amnesia 5.13a and Carl's Route 5.12c, it is always interesting finishing routes at Flat since there are no anchors. You have to mantle and top out, then rest and reverse the mantle and drop. We will probably be headed to Flat again tomorrow, hopefully, and with cooler weather.

Today is a big Thanksgiving party at Linda's sisters house with family and their friends. Since just about everything is closed today I got to make blue cheese hamburgers for everyone for lunch. I think we finished 6 pounds of meat, but there may have been 15 people.

I have some photos of the kids playing in the creek and Linda climbing that I will try to get up once I can downsize them.

Dylan's Tuesday

Well yesterday was an interesting day. We had Dylan's first parent teacher conference of the year. He seems to be doing OK at school, getting along with the other kids and such. He has some issue with listening to the teacher so we have been working on that. He does not like to go in from the playground when outside time is up, the teacher even tried to "leave" him out on the playground and take everyone else in, in the hopes that Dylan would get spooked being out there alone and come running in. Dylan just continued to play in the sandbox as though nothing was wrong.

We received a book that one of the teachers had made of a story that Dylan told her while on the playground and during early care. It is a story about a dog (who happens to be named Komo, which is the name of Chris, Jo and Trinity's dog) and Dylan and the dogs friend that Dylan made up. The teacher than wrote it down and illustrated it, quite well I might add, apparently she is an art teacher.

After the meeting Dylan had his 3 year old Dr's appointment. This one includes no required shots and Dylan was actually quite distressed that he was not going to get a shot. Since he is no longer allergic to eggs though he was able to get the flu shot which he was surprisingly happy about, though his eyes did get big when the needle went in. I wonder how often it is that a 3 year old asks for a shot and fusses when they are told that they don't need one?

Dylan with Buzz and a Weekend of Climbing

Here is a video of Dylan playing with his Buzzlight Year toy.

On Saturday we headed to Datil which should be too cold to climb at by this point, but instead it was too warm to climb in the sun. It seems as though it is going to be a warm and dry winter. Linda got back on "Straight on till Morning" which is 5.12c she had tried once a couple of years ago. She nearly did it on her second try this time around. It would only be her second route of the grade that she had done. Hopefully it will stay warm enough for us to make another trip out this year so she can get it done.

On Sunday I headed up to the Sandias with John Kear to try and climb a new route that was put up earlier this year called Daisy, named after the first ascentionists dog, that is reportedly 5.13. John had gotten on the route on Friday and worked out the moves but not been able to link it without falling because it was too hot, how can it be too hot at 10,000 feet in November? We warmed up by climbing a couple of pitches up a neighboring route since the hard pitch was the first off the ground. John then gave a great fight, squeezing for all he was worth and nearly puking and managed to send the route for the second? ascent and after watching him on it I was able to do the route first try as well. It probably is low end 5.13 and not mid range but still a great route. The second pitch is really fun and quite a bit easier on good hold up a steep red wall. Sadly the last pitch leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth as the rock quality deteriorates dramatically and it seems as though the first ascent party did not put much effort into cleaning it, though they may have put more time into cleaning it than the other pitches it could still use some more. All in all a pretty good day out in the mountains for John and I, and a really good route if you can look past the final pitch.

14th Annual Yank-N-Yard

I was joking around with some friends that with taking care of Dylan most of the time I actually earn about 25% of my yearly income in the couple of weeks a year we bring in reinforcements to watch him.

Well the second week of October was one of those weeks. My parents came out to help watch Dylan so I could help get everything ready for the Yank-N-Yard competition that was in it's 14th year. I got to spend maybe only 10 hours with my parents in almost 10 days while they were out, but w did have dinner and dessert for my mom's birthday.

Linda competed on Friday night Open qualifying and missed finals by one spot. Pretty great considering she is twice the age of most of the competitors and has very little big competition experience. Then on Saturday she easily won the citizens competition by about 3000 points which means that she did not even need to do all her problems to win, she could have counted just her top 3 and beaten everyone else counting their top 6.

After the citizens competition on Saturday the Open Finals happened. The link below is to a video put together of the finals.

Yank-N-Yard Finals Video by Alstin Films

Needless to say,with how much of a show it was Linda is kind of glad that she did not make finals. Pretty good competition all around. I managed to pull together about $8000 in raffle prizes for the citizens competition and the gym gave away $4000 cash to the open competitors.

Photos from Sitting Bull Falls

Here are some photos from our second weekend at Sitting Bull Falls. These first ons were taken by Matt Menotti who came out with Katie from Austin to meet us for Labor Day weekend. This is me hanging the draws for everyone on Counting Coup 5.12, which is one of the best routes of its grade in the state. Linda sent this on her first try one she gave up on the very reachy short person beta and used a real hod that made the moves shorter. This is at the start of the route just getting up to the rest before the hardest moves.
Her I am in the middle of the crux.
Counting Coup is a great route and very fun. Linda was quite pleased with her success and it started a string of days out climbing during which she climbed a 5.12 every day. including the next day when she did the 5.12a to the left in 2 tries.

This second group were taken by our friend Matt Moore who works with me at the climbing gym and the are on Kootenai Cruiser which is 5.13+ and I managed to do on my second try.

There is some physical climbing on underclings to get up to the hardest section.
Followed by a very physical clip,
And capped by a pretty long throw to a good edge,
Which I barely caught.
Then a ways to the anchor on easier 5.12 climbing.
Finishing off Kootenai Cruiser means that I've finished off the cliff, except for the undone project right out the middle which has some very viscous looking holds on it and will probably require someone with much stronger tendons than mine. Something about the shallow sloping two finger pocket and V slot mono that is only a pad on a 45 degree wall with poor feet is unappealing to me, though if we go back I need to try something....

Dylan's 3rd Birthday

On Friday the 22nd Dylan turned 3. We had a little birthday party for him, inviting his class mates and some of our climbing friends that have kids. We started in the park which was great for the little ones as they got to run around but was probably a bit cold for the adults since it has cooled off in the last few days. After eating a bit we headed back to the house for cake and ice cream and to make a mess. Here is Dylan and his birthday cake.
Among the guests was JaxsonWest and his little sister Bridgette. At 9 months Bridgette is really mellow and all the kids seemed to know to give her some space, she never got knocked over or anything and Dylan was even good enough to share toys with her...and the other kids as well.
We only let Dylan open a couple of gifts on Friday night and on Saturday night he got to open the present that Linda and I got for him.
Buzz could use a "to infinity and beyond" button. As it is it is one of 6 lines he says when you press a particular button and Dylan will sit there and push that button until that line comes up and then run around making Buzz fly and repeat. Dylan even read Buzz a goodnight story that night.

Some photos

Well it has been awhile. Here are some photos.
This was camping for the weekend A Datil with Mark and Debi. They have a cab over camper that Dylan loved, it is just his size when it is collapsed.
That same weekend Linda got stung on the lip by a bee that was trying to drink from her water bottle at the same time she was. Nothing happened the first day but the next morning it looked like she had gotten a botox treatment for lip enhancement.
We headed to SE New Mexico to climb at Sitting Bull Falls on the first weekend of September and meet up with some friends from Austin to limb then continued on to Austin for the rest of the week. Here Dylan and Noah are stealing Thu's food. Dylan will attach himself to anyone who has food and is willing to part with it.
After being in SE NM in the 95 degree heat with not a cloud in the sky, by the time we got to Austin the remnants of a tropical storm were just starting to roll through and it rained for about 36 straight hours causing tons of flooding. Later in the week when we headed out climbing it was back up to 90 degrees with 70+ percent humidity. Conditions that put you at risk of heat stroke with physical activity.

Here is a shot of Dylan attempting to brush his teeth.
And here is Dylan after eating a raw steak...actually waking up with a bloody nose and this is after I did a first wipe down.